This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Xinhua
Jul 14, 2010
A 900-year-old Byzantine church has been unearthed in south Turkey, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday.
Professor Engin Akyurek from Istanbul University's Art History Department said that this well-preserved Byzantine church had been found 6 meters below ground level at the Myra ancient city located in Demre town of the Mediterranean province of Antalya.
Akyurek said the 5-meter wide and 10-meter high temple's dome had been partially destroyed; ho
Source: BBC News
Jul 14, 2010
Taipei secondary school student Lai Wei-li swayed awkwardly while trying to make music with a Saisiyat tribal instrument of dangling bamboo tubes strapped to her back.
"It's really cool and interesting. It's harder than it looks. I have to control my footsteps, sway my body back and forth, and co-ordinate with others," said Lai, while playing the "tapangsan".
Half Han-Chinese and half indigenous, it is not often that Lai gets to experience indigenous
Source: WaPo
Jul 14, 2010
The story of the last cataclysmic American oil spill has evolved over time into a straightforward tale of cause and effect: In 1989, a hard-drinking skipper ran his tanker aground in Alaska, and Exxon was unable to prevent crude from spreading along hundreds of miles of pristine shoreline.
But the full story of the Exxon Valdez wreck is far more complex, and it offers striking parallels to today's events in the Gulf of Mexico -- including a central role played by a consortium led by
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 14, 2010
Proponents of the Google Books project have argued that the effort to scan every printed book in the world into a digital database will be a game-changer for scholarship. Now Google is trying help digital humanities scholars prove it.
The company plans to announce today that it is bankrolling 12 university-based research projects designed to demonstrate the potential value to scholarship of its growing digital vault.
Google has been scanning books from cooperating libra
Source: Herald Sun (AU)
Jul 13, 2010
A VIDEO of a Melbourne woman's family singing and dancing along to the Gloria Gaynor hit I Will Survive while on a trip to a Nazi death camp has angered Jews across the globe.
Jane Korman, an artist who lives in Ashwood and is Jewish, posted the video of her 89-year-old father Adolk - who survived the Holocaust - and her three children dancing to the hit inside the Auschwitz death camp in Poland where as many as 1.1 million people were killed during World War II.
Althou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 13, 2010
Kathy Mills exposed the entrance to the secret chamber that had been hidden for centuries as she rehearsed a scene for an upcoming production of the musical Quasimodo at St Mary's Church, in Redgrave, Suffolk.
She dislodged a marble flagstone near the altar of the 14th century building and her foot vanished into a dark void below.
Mrs Mills, who is in her 60s, suffered a swollen ankle.
But she was amazed to be told she had uncovered a mystery tomb containin
Source: Reuters
Jul 13, 2010
Just like his Medieval counterparts 600 years ago armourer Tomasz Samula has hardly any time to outfit his knights before battle commences....
Saturday, thousands of re-enactors will become the knights, infantry, artillerymen and other combatants of the Polish-Lithuanian army and the Teutonic Knights who they defeated in a massive battle on a field near this Polish village in 1410....
The fashioning and fixing of armor in time for the battle has put a smile on the faces
Source: Oxford Mail
Jul 13, 2010
THE hot dry weather is revealing some of Oxfordshire’s Bronze Age history normally hidden from view.
Hot air balloon pilot Michael Wolf, of Reading Road, Wallingford, was training another pilot near North Stoke when they spotted several dark circles in a farmer’s field.
Crops had grown at different speeds because of ancient ditches hidden beneath the soil which once surrounded prehistoric burial mounds.
The site dates back 3,500 years but is hidden under
Source: BBC
Jul 13, 2010
A bid to revamp a memorial in Surrey to Jack Phillips, chief telegraphist on the Titanic, has moved forward.
Waverley council said it had received initial support in a bid for funds to restore the Grade II-listed Phillips Memorial Cloister and improve the park.
The Godalming memorial, built in 1914, is said to be the largest of any built to remember a single Titanic victim.
The council wants to restore the memorial in time for the 2012 centenary of the sink
Source: BBC
Jul 13, 2010
France will raise war pensions for its African war veterans to the same level as those of their French comrades, Nicolas Sarkozy has said.
Tens of thousands are still alive and will benefit from new pension laws.
Mr Sarkozy said his government had agreed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to introduce "perfect equality" of military pensions for veterans of French forces - regardless of what country they lived in.
France had previously resisted paying
Source: AP
Jul 13, 2010
President Barack Obama is trying to bring home some of the much-lauded strategies his predecessor used to fight AIDS around the world.
The national strategy for combatting HIV and AIDS the Obama administration released Tuesday credits the Bush-era international campaign against AIDS for setting clear targets and ensuring a variety of agencies and groups worked together smoothly to achieve them.
George W. Bush launched the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or P
Source: Discovey News
Jul 12, 2010
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have unearthed the most ancient written document ever found in the Holy City – a tiny fragment of a letter thought to be addressed to Akhenaten, the “heretic” pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the 14th century B.C.
Discovered outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the document consists of a minuscule clay fragment -- about one square inch -- covered with cuneiform script in ancient Akkadian.
Thought to date back some 3,400 years, the fragment app
Source: BBC
Jul 12, 2010
Council workers cleaning up at Sutton Green have discovered an old disused air raid shelter from the Second World War.
The workers noticed a five metre hole in the ground and it is thought to be the roof of a buried air raid shelter which has collapsed.
The only council records mentioning the public bomb shelter are that three large shelters capable of housing 450 people were constructed in the area in 1939/1940.
However, there are no photographs or recor
Source: WaPo
Jul 12, 2010
In the month since Army investigators found hundreds of discrepancies between grave sites and burial records at Arlington National Cemetery, two very different worlds have emerged inside the gates of the Washington area's most venerated cemetery.
For the public, little has changed. Each weekday morning, solemn burials begin in far-flung corners of Arlington -- spread out so that one grieving family won't encounter another. By midday, a constant stream of sweltering tourists treks up
Source: AP
Jul 12, 2010
The teams participating in the World Lacrosse Championships in England represent 30 nations, from Argentina to Latvia to South Korea to Iroquois.
The Iroquois helped invent lacrosse and, in a rare example of international recognition of American Indian sovereignty, they participate at every tournament as a separate nation. But they might not be at this year's world championship tournament because of a dispute over the validity of their passports.
The 23 players have pas
Source: NYT
Jul 12, 2010
...BP was born in 1908 when a rich Englishman named William Knox D’Arcy struck oil in Iran and formed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Treating the locals as little more than imperial subjects, the company, partly owned by the British government, expanded across the region, its fortunes intertwined with those of the British Empire.
But as oil-rich countries around the world began nationalizing their oil fields, British Petroleum, as it later became known, was forced to retreat and fin
Source: BBC
Jul 12, 2010
Archaeologists are calling for volunteers to help unearth the secrets of a historic site in Aberdeen.
Tullos Hill has long been known as an important archaeological site because four Bronze Age burial cairns are located there.
But interest was renewed several years ago when a survey revealed new historic and archaeological features.
Archaeologists now want the public to help search for artefacts which reveal more of the hill's intriguing past.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 12, 2010
The remains of 19th-century Aboriginal warrior Yagan have been laid to rest in western Australia, nearly 180 years after he was killed and his severed head was displayed in a British museum.
The private ceremony held by the Noongar tribe coincided with the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park in Swan Valley, just outside of Perth in Western Australia.
Yagan was shot by a European settler in 1833. His body was believed to be buried in Swan Valley but his head was taken to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 12, 2010
The imam of the main mosque in Saddam Hussein's former stronghold Tikrit has been arrested for spray-painting the late dictator's name on the mosque.
The imam, a former Iraqi soldier under Saddam, was arrested on Thursday on the street outside his home and taken to police headquarters, his family said.
Erected as the Great Saddam Mosque in 2002, the imposing building was renamed the Great Tikrit Mosque after the former president was ousted following the 2003 US-led inv
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 12, 2010
A tiny clay fragment dating from the 14th century BC, which was discovered outside Jerusalem's Old City walls, contains the oldest written document found in the city, researchers say.
The 3,350-year-old clay fragment was uncovered during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century BC tower, dating from the period of King Solomon in an area near the southern wall of the Old City, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said today in an emailed statement. Details of the find app
